

i A South Polar skua, the avian "king of the sea" 

 with a 4-foot wingspan, in search of victims in the 

 Gulf of the Farallones. Breeding deep in the Southern 

 Hemisphere, skuas disperse over the oceans during 

 the nonbreeding seasons (summer and fall in the 

 Northern Hemisphere), as far north as the Gulf 

 of Alaska. Skuas are piratic and forcibly extract 

 food from their victims shearwaters, petrels, gulls, 

 and even albatrosses. They are solitary marauders, 

 nowhere common, but in the gulf they are always a 

 menace to visiting seabirds. 



A tufted puffin eating a small fish. 

 Only 50 or 60 of these birds breed on 

 the Farallon Islands each year, in deep 

 rocky crevices within the cliffs. Where 

 these striking birds go in the winter is 

 unknown, evidently somewhere far out 

 at sea. Populations of tufted puffins 

 numbered in the thousands during the 

 1800's; recent declines are attributed 

 to a degradation in the marine environ- 

 ment and, possibly, to the disappear- 

 ance of Pacific sardines in the 1940s. 

 (Photograph from Gulf of the Faral- 

 lones National Marine Sanctuary.) - 



46 Biology and Ecological Niches in the Gulf of the Farallones 



